The spectre of spiralling violence: Apocalyptic crossroads? A troubling larger picture | S.G.Vombatkere

The barbaric Pahalgam terrorist attack of April 22nd 2025 (ironically Earth Day) appallingly targetting Hindus, is shocking and condemnable beyond words. This latest terrorist attack is an attempt by the perpetrators, to intensify the narrative of religious communal division, by holding entire societies to ransom. A terrorist outfit named The Resistance Front, reportedly claims responsibility for the attack.

The President and PM and other constitutional appointees at Centre and the States, have expressed their shock and pain, condoled with the victims and their families, and assured all assistance and relief. All political parties and people across the nation are shocked, and unequivocally and strongly condemn the attack. PM Modi, has rightly assured the nation that those responsible for the heinous act will not be spared, and will be brought to justice, and that their evil agenda will never succeed.

The terrorists have effectively challenged Government. It is certain that Government will forcefully deploy its intelligence and security apparatus, and its police and military forces, to not only bring the killers to justice, but also to ensure that such abhorrent events do not recur.

The victims are peaceful tourists from a number of different states in India. The initial shock of the survivors and of the families of the victims, will inevitably turn to anger against the perpetrators of this heinous attack. As inevitably, they and their friends and associates, will demand revenge. This revenge will focus on the Muslim communities in their respective neighbourhoods, and even beyond.

This is an unpredictable tinder-box that may well spark an explosion of violence, resulting in continuous or at least continual communal violence. It will in turn, result in uncontrollable violence with permanent fragmentation of society and irreversible economic loss, at all levels of society.

There is enormous responsibility upon the Central government and every State and UT government, to ensure that effective pre-emptive measures are implemented, to prevent flaring up of spontaneous or planned social violence, from or by any community, against any other community. This is in the larger interest of the safety of the vast majority of people of all religious communities, who bear no personal ill-will against people of any specific religious community.

There may be three broad groups who may bear ill-will against another religious community. These are:

• The relatives and friends of the victims of Pahalgam and of earlier terrorist killings, whether perpetrated at the behest of Pakistan or otherwise, who will seek and demand revenge. [“Otherwise”, as in Manipur, for example].
• The violence-seeking clergy and laypersons of different religions who spout hate and threaten violence against adherents of an adversarial religious community.
• Those who benefit politically and/or monetarily from violence, not excluding politically connected mafia of smugglers and traders of arms and ammunition, drugs, gold, etc.

All governments of every political hue, need to understand that, apart from the above three “categories” of folk, the vast majority of people of all ages in society, of every religious community, only want peace, and the space to live their lives free from violence. Recognising the ongoing a-religious, irrational caste violence, possible social harmony is a bonus factor. “Peace above all else” and “No violence by word or deed”, need to be the bye-lines and subtext of all social media communications.

The aggravators of violence

There are perhaps three “aggravators” of violence. These are the cause of social unrest due to economic and physical violence within and between societies and nations. Apart from the shadowy anti-peace, destructive, arms-armaments vendors of the military-industrial sector, who benefit from conflict of every sort (and deserves separate discussion), they are:

• The changing global economic scenario.
• The current economic development system.
• The climate change factor.

The global economic scenario is rapidly changing, and will impact every national economy, benefitting none. The banking, financial, trading and supply-chain, and insurance (economic risk cover) structures in every nation, will demand re-thinking and re-structuring, in keeping with changing geo-political realities. Societies across all nations – and especially the lower economic vulnerable sections, numbering many millions – are exposed to this huge addition to the ongoing uncertainties and anxieties concerning their daily lives. This is nothing less than economic violence, albeit untargeted and unintended, but very real-life and real-time. It demands attention at every nation’s apex levels, because it aggravates already manifest internal social unrest.

The current economic development system of every nation is based upon unlimited year-on-year economic growth in terms of money (GDP). It has an insatiable appetite for natural resources to be extracted at industrial scale, to enable production of goods and services, for commercial-level consumption by societies. The need to acquire natural resources, assurance of the supply-chain supporting industrial processes, and the need to market the output goods and services, govern global economic-political relations, including levy of trade tariffs.

The acquisition of primary resources and the production of goods and services, and the use/consumption and ultimate disposal of the consumed goods, results in adverse environmental outcomes, and ecological destruction. Environmental disasters like flash floods, mountain-region land subsidence, landslides and avalanches, are attributable to large-scale deforestation in the name of developmental projects. These disasters cause immense personal suffering, and societal and economic loss. Disasters affect the economic and health parameters of the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society, aggravating their discontent.

The vast numbers of people who are deprived of land and livelihood due to displacement on account of mega-developmental projects, add to the multiple cohorts of those similarly affected over earlier decades. Project-displaced people are unwelcome in any location to which they migrate, and the “host” communities, often themselves earlier displaced folk, strongly resist intrusion of newcomers, because it threatens their social and economic situation. Displaced families are the victims of economic developmental violence, unwanted everywhere. They are the discontents of societies, in countries where this model of development for economic-growth-at-any-cost is aggressively promoted, with sharp focus on monetary profit. This system has demonstrably caused and increased economic inequality. As far as India is concerned, it is reportedly among the more economically unequal nations. This has visibly translated to economic polarisation of society and social unrest. There is a silently simmering substrate of suppressed anger due to economic violence, which will aggravate and be aggravated by communal violence.

The climate change factor is a veritable elephant in the room. The extreme events due to global warming-driven climate change enormously intensify environmental disasters, which affect all sections of society and regional economies. The creeping sea level rise due to global warming has aggravated incremental migration of large non-urban populations away from coasts, which are already getting steadily eroded, and destroying habitats and livelihoods of coastal communities. They are the displaced families of sea level rise, who, like project-displaced families, are unwanted wherever they seek to settle, in densely populated inland regions. They join the legions of previous discontents, and aggravate social tensions. Communal violence will intensify existing aggravation.

An apocalyptic crossroads

There is little if any doubt that this latest Pahalgam attack has happened with the blessings and support, if not active planning, of Pakistan’s army and ISI, as part of its low-intensity warfare against India. Pakistan is on the brink of collapse by sectarian violence, but the Pakistan army generals have not abandoned terrorism as part of their strategic doctrine against India, even though India seeks normal neighbourly relations with Pakistan in an environment free from terror, hostility and violence. [1]

Pakistan will certainly misinterpret any Indian initiative to restore broken ties, as weakness. Thus, India’s response to Pahalgam as a wider armed conflict with Pakistan, is possibly “on the table” in New Delhi. However, China is very likely to strategically and tactically assist Pakistan by deployment of PLA forces, and convert the primacy of the Pakistani front to a Chinese front. This will be extremely challenging for India in the economic sense, apart from the obvious military challenge. Clandestine cyber attack on key sectors of the Indian economy, designed to hamper military operations cannot be ruled out.

How New Delhi reacts to Pahalgam, in the evolving internal security situation and in its external political (military-diplomatic) responses, will affect India’s image in international fora. In the meanwhile, all governments and all political parties need to sink their differences, and mobilise all possible political resources to address the possibility of communal violence causing embedded violence in society, spiralling out of control.